We are just getting into sending auto e-mails and are testing with internal e-mails with the plans to send confirmations to customers. A common theme I’ve seen and am worried about is inadvertently sending e-mails from the test/pilot system. Being on the front end of creating these, I can hopefully build in an easy to manage method for making sure pilot system doesn’t send E-mails. We change the name of the plant currently when we switch over, is there an easy way use that? I don’t really want to jump in to SQL scripts to change off the lines in the database to change the company or the plant.
Are there any other easy tricks to work into a condition to stop the email part of the BPM from firing? The searching that I’ve done here shows some pretty complicated solutions. I think most of that is because the solution is usually after all the e-mails are set up and they are scrambling to fix it after…
I suppose just removing the system e-mail address/password) in the company maintenance could do the trick too. (Someone just has to remember to do it)
instead of stopping, create a DMT that replaces all customer/supplier/contact email addresses with your own internal (junk) email address in your test environment. That way, you can still test your work, but not affect the external world.
We have a Copy VBScript that does the Database Copies, Find Replace, Enables Security Managers (since in PRD we have no Security Managers without a prior request ticket), Changes Avalara API Key to sandbox so we dont get billed, Clears AlertQue, BPM Async Queue, Find Replace URLs from PRD to DEV, changes manager password to manager, ACH Output Path etc…
That’s an idea. It would only work for dynamically added e-mail addresses (which any to customers probably would be) I think I would want a strategy that blocks it for typed e-mail addresses too. If I need to test, I would simply remove the condition in the BPM that I need to test.
Our pilot and live are on the same server (I’m sure that’s bad, but we don’t do any crazy customization that would have cross over problems… yet anyways), so I don’t think that would work.
Could you as you stated change the SMTP Server Address to have another SMTP Relay Local that simply re-routes all email traffic to dev@whatever.com ? Theres plenty of freeware SMTP Relay Software.
I think you missed my original statement… (But I was a little vague about the details). I was not referring to a BPM… but instead using DMT to fix EVERYTHING.
in your test environment, you EXPORT all the Customers, Suppliers, Conact (via a BAQ) records. You only need to export the Company code, Customer ID, and Email address columns…
Then in EXCEL, replace all the email addresses with an internal email
then using DMT, Import this excel file… you are essentially wiping your TEST database clean of all outside references.
But you bring up a good point… in Test, you may also want to put in a BPM that always cleans NEW Email addresses to make sure they are internal.
We change company name to start with TEST or PILOT, and then when you create your BPMs you add a condition to that company is your Prod Company…
You could also add a user code, and make it inactive in your test environment and add a condition where only send an email if that user code is active
I totally forgot about the condition for count rows in the BPM. I can just look in the part plant table (or where ever else) and search for something like company name or plant name to match exactly what’s in live. Then if it’s not, fail the test no e-mail.
Yes, it would, assuming you can find all the BPMs and reports (yes, reports can send emails) that send emails… Would be very bad to “test” printing of invoices and find that you just sent test invoices to your customers.
There are probably other strategies out there… I don’t like to play dangerous games.
